Quote Originally Posted by pillowtalk6188 View Post
i'm going to try my hardest to be there saturday. my boss "accidentally" scheduled me to work that day. i'm looking for a pair of boas so i can bypass the whole shipping fee, but now i'm a little afraid of what i might find. i'm pretty sure i know how to spot a sick animal. i mean, anything wrong is visible right? like bloody vent, mites, ticks, emaciation, stuck on shed/eye caps, dents in the head, an animal cold to the touch. am i forgetting anything?

i'm from SC by the way, i didn't know there were people in my area that were interested in reptiles. i've never met anyone in sc that kept snakes besides people i see going in and out of the pet store where i get my mice from. i'm looking for a pair of baby columbian boas, relatively cheap. there the first boas i'm adding to my small collection and also the first pair i'll be using for breeding in the future.

anyone from SC, send me a pm, i'd love to talk.
Not everything. Be prepared to QT any boas that you pick up in a completely opposite end of the house as your pythons - preferably in a different building, but that's not feasable for many keepers. Boas can carry IBD (Inclusion Body Disease) and not show any symptoms - for a LONG time, but a python exposed to a boa that's a carrier will succomb to IBD within a month. It is lethal very quickly to pythons, and without taking a biopsy of the liver, it's not possible to conclusively diagnose.

As much as I would love to own a dwarf locality boa myself, I've made the decision NOT to bring boas into my collection. I would recommend that between now and Saturday you print a list of vendors from the Repticon site, and then do a search on each vendor on the BOI to see what type of reputation they have.

Not trying to scare you any, but you should be aware of the risks when keeping both boas and pythons.